The men who had killed her father's driver, poor handsome Nelson, had taken the stolen limo into a warehouse or factory district that she didn't recognize. Was it the terrible slum called Warehouse Way? But the drive from her school hadn't seemed long enough for it to be that. It didn't matter. Wherever it was, she didn't want to be there. Wherever it was, she knew she was in grave danger.

But despite their threatening appearance and the presence of their guns, the men had not been violent toward her. They had not abused her sexually, or even verbally, beyond giving her terse commands. It was very apparent that they were just doing a job. And waiting for someone else to show up.

It wasn't long before he did.

A man entered the spacious, largely vacant shipping department from its opposite end, and walked toward Yuki and her two captors. His expensive shoes clicked against the floor and he wore a five-piece business suit personally tailored to his short, powerful body. The man's graying hair was neatly cut, his face as creased but hard as a clenched fist. When he planted himself before Yuki, he stared down into her face with an intensity that bored straight through her. His husky voice revealed the tough accent of someone raised on the streets.

"Do you know who I am?"

Yuki had been crying, on and off, since she had first seen Nelson Soto's dead body slumped down in the passenger's seat of her father's hoverlimo. Tears ran afresh from her red and swollen eyes, and she whimpered, "Nooo."

"I'm the father of your classmate, Krimson Tableau. Do you know her?"

Yuki had been too panicked, too disoriented, to formulate any clear theories about what was happening to her, but now things made a terrible sense. "Yes," she answered, sniffling.

"I think your father knows her, too, little girl. And I think he knows what happened to her. Your father believes my daughter did something to some fucking toy of yours, doesn't he?"

"No," she whined. "No, I don't know, please."

"Look, I don't want to have to hurt you. But I'm not getting anywhere with your father, and now he's not getting you back until he gives me some answers. Dead or alive, he had better let me know where my daughter is. Or I'm afraid he's going to start feeling the feelings I'm feeling. Don't you think that's fair enough?"

"Please… I think I know where Krimson is."

If Adrian Tableau's face could grow any more intense, it did. "You do? Where is she?"

"Her friends heard her on their Ouija phones today."

"What? Those goddamn things?"

"She told them she's at a place called. called Steward Gardens."

"And where the hell is that?"

"It's not too far from Quidd's Market," Yuki went on hopefully.

"Beaumonde Square?" one of the camouflaged men spoke up.

"Yes. One time my dad took me to Quidd's Market and he drove me down the street to see Steward Gardens."

"Why?" Tableau demanded.

"Because he said my Uncle James owned that place, but it never opened up because of problems."

Adrian Tableau looked around slowly at his two waiting security men. "Leave her car here. We'll take mine."

Mr. Smithee came over and took Yuki by the arm, to help her up from her chair and to escort her while walking. As the four people crossed the room toward its exit, the middle of the three forgotten robots turned its head to watch them, looking all the more morose at having lost its temporary company so soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

revelations

His meeting with Pablo Fujiwara fresh in his mind, for an hour now Jeremy Stake had been searching out and reading archived news stories on the net regarding the cult that had formerly owned Alvine Products, and used its resources to create a bizarre army.

Nearly all of the human-like Kalian race worshiped the demon/god Ugghiutu, but this particular schismatic group had not been content with merely paying him tribute, had instead been intent on awakening him from some sort of spell he was under. Reanimating him from his living death. Or was that merely metaphorical? Maybe this crop of life forms was just meant to represent Ugghiutu, supposedly reborn in new flesh as a colony of animals, though perhaps possessing a communal mind. At least, that was what one of the more adventurous articles suggested. Most of the major news outlets seemed to have treated the idea of an army of monsters as the ludicrous plot of an overzealous group of crackpots, dismissing any real threat-despite several rescue workers having been killed by a few of the awakened creatures before they, too, were consumed in the fire raging through Alvine as a result of the earthquake that had all but gutted the complex.

Still, some of these more audacious journalists not only took the threat more seriously, but drew connections to other cults and ominous events, here on Oasis and on other worlds as well. They cited the existence of a Tikkihotto cult, a Choom cult, even Earth-based cults with similar beliefs centered around a race of god-like "Outsiders" that awaited their rebirth and return to power. Nineteen years ago there had been a major incident right here in Punktown, when three vast, insectoid creatures had attempted entry into this plane of existence, the extradimensional entities apparently summoned by a sect of beetle-like Coleopteroids (or Bedbugs, as the race was nicknamed). The government had become involved, even killing one of the titanic-though still immature-creatures. They had been called Gatherers by the Bedbug cultists, but these journalists linked them to the Outsiders that the Ugghiutu followers spoke of.

Accompanying one of the articles was a painting taken from an ancient Kalian text that portrayed great Ugghiutu in one of the guises he could manifest. The illustration was captioned "The Black Cathedral." Apparently Ugghiutu would form his amorphous black flesh into the semblance of a temple that would appear in remote places, and lure the unwary inside as unwilling sacrifices. This temple, consisting of himself in tribute to himself, exhibited a looming dome in the center (a head? Stake wondered), minarets made of entwined tentacles, and two flat-roofed wings of several floors that framed the central rotunda.

Such folklore-like elements aside, Stake was open-minded about what he read. After all, the woman he loved was an extradimensional being herself. And look at the great power she had wielded over him. Conquering, and laying to waste, his world.

Stake went to a net bookstore called Shocklines to order two books relevant to these matters; Monstrocity, a non-fiction account of the Alvine Products controversy, supposedly written by a man who had opposed the Ugghiutu cult, and Everybody Scream!, which dealt with the night the three Gatherers had attempted to cross into this dimension to wreak havoc. But while Stake was looking up the books, a call for him came over his comp and he switched the screen to vidphone mode. When he saw the call came from Janice Poole, he let it through.

She didn't look like her usual flirtatious, smiling self. She looked surprisingly grim. "Jer," she said, "I think I saw Yuki Fukuda abducted in front of the Arbury School a little while ago."

"What?" he hissed. "You think?"

"It was her car, but a forcer was making her get inside, and then he got in after her. I thought I heard her cry out. I don't know where her regular driver went to."

"Maybe he was in on it. Got paid off. Did you tell the police?"

"No. In case it really is the police, for whatever reason."

"I doubt that. It has to be that blasting Tableau. Did you call Fukuda?"

Janice seemed to squirm inside her skin for a moment. "I called him first. He didn't want me to tell you, but I couldn't hold it in anymore."